This invention relates to a board game, and particularly to a board game for two opposing contestants, involving movement and capture of playing pieces.
Games of strategy and tactics requiring mental skill and planning abilities have long been popular forms of entertainment. For example, chess has for hundreds of years enjoyed a reputation as being an entertaining and intellectually stimulating board game of movement and capture. In a sense, however, chess is predictable, since the object of the chess game is to capture the king, whose position at the beginning of each game is always the same. As a result, the object of each game of chess is always clearly defined from the outset. Consequently, defensive strategy in the game of chess may be limited, and certain opening patterns of moves are often repeated.
While chess offers sufficient challenge and entertainment for many people, chess is too predictable for some. The number of useable options for the opening of the chess game is too limited for some, while others find the size of the chess board and the number of different types of playing pieces too limited.
In chess, pieces may be lost to an opponent, yet by moving a pawn to the far side of the playing board, a chess player may regain lost pieces. This capacity to recoup one's losses is felt by many to make chess too unrealistic for even a board game.
While in some games complexity is created by the use of cards which randomly impose unexpected and unpredictable limitations upon the moves of the player, such artificially enhanced complexity interjects an undesirable element of chance into a game which is otherwise a contest of intellects. The use of such "chance" cards is, then, undesirable as a means of adding challenge and complexity to a board game.
What is needed, therefore, is a competitive board game for two players which provides greater complexity and intellectual challenge than chess. It would be highly desirable to provide a broader choice of opening options, and a broad spectrum of defensive option, while maintaining a low level of predictability.